


Healed By the Same

by badboy_fangirl



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-29
Updated: 2011-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-28 11:22:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/307361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Damon takes Elena away from Mystic Falls for her safety (but without her consent).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Goes AU from 2x16 "The House Guest." Also spoilers for _The West Wing_.
> 
> I wrote this for linsell_farm, for fandomaid, but also because Ian Somerhalder? He gives me the feelings and now apparently, he's giving me the plot bunnies. This all came from him saying he wants Damon to kidnap Elena, and linsell_farm saying she wanted Damon and Elena to ride horses. IDEK. Beta'd by the charmingly brilliant whenjenn and the always insightful becca_radcgg. Title lifted from the song "Timing is Everything," on the _Country Strong_ Soundtrack.

  
_You can be hurt by love,  
Or healed by the same,  
Timing is everything._   


 

He kidnaps her on a Thursday, picking her up from school on a day when Stefan never turned up because of other pressing issues (read: Klaus finally came to town). She doesn't realize he's taking her somewhere other than his house until about twenty minutes into the drive because as fortune would have it the Boarding House is off the same route they need to take to leave town. When she starts to question—and then to shout that she _is not going anywhere for her own good, thank you very much!_ —he looks at her from across the bench seat of the Camaro and says bluntly:

"Either shut up and be good, or I'll rip that necklace off of you and _make_ you."

She folds her arms over her chest and turns her head away from him, staring out into the rapidly passing scenery.

She doesn't speak again for two hours, even when they stop to get gas. She gets out to pee and he threatens her with snapped limbs if she tries to shimmy out the high window of the public restroom.

It's as the sun is going down, and Damon has popped in his Mumford and Sons CD, that she asks dully, "Where are we going anyway?"

He glances over at her, but she's still not looking at him, as though to do so would suddenly make this all okay. Instead, she stares straight ahead, and the beauty of her profile grabs at something in his chest so that he has to shake himself to look back at the road. He can't go all soft and feel sorry for her. He knows what Elena's like; they all do. That's why he'd been chosen for this job, because everyone agreed he'd be mean enough to handle her the way she needs to be handled. (Since they weren’t traveling with a witch who could cast an entrapment spell at any given location, he even had Stefan's permission to use compulsion if he had to.)

"Ric's family has a cabin, just like the Gilbert Clan, but his is in upstate New York, and nobody knows about it. Everyone thinks you'll be safer there."

"Everyone?" she snaps.

"I know you think I did this without Stefan's approval—it would be far easier to hate me, and me alone, I'm sure—but he is just as onboard about it."

"Then why can't I call him?" (He'd taken her cell phone from her with a sneaky ploy about fifteen minutes into the drive.)

"Because cell phones are traceable."

Elena snorts. "What? Is Klaus with the FBI?"

He slides her a look of menace mixed with annoyance, but she's still not looking at him, so it serves no purpose.

"We're not taking any chances," he says when her eyes don't even skitter towards him in the least.

"How will you get in, if it's Alaric's place? Me inviting you in won't work. (Like I would anyway)," she mutters under her breath.

"Ric and I came up here last month together. We already worked that out."

Now her head snaps around and she demands, "You've been planning this for that long?!"

He meets her gaze and gives her a trademark smirk. "Longer," he quips.

"I hate you," she spits, and her head whips back so that she's staring out the window into the gathering darkness.

"I know," he says, trying to keep the devil-may-care tone in his voice.

After that she stops talking to him again, and really, it's for the best.

 

 

It's almost midnight when they arrive at their destination. Despite her anger, by then Elena is tired. He can see it in the droop of her shoulders as she climbs from the car. He pops the trunk and walks around to get their luggage.

She comes around too and looks inside. "Who packed my suitcase?" she asks.

Her voice sounds rusty, unused, and above all, defeated. He hates that, he really does, but he steels himself against any tenderness. This is for her own good, and he really doesn't give a flying fuck if she hates him forever if it keeps her alive.

(Okay, he _cares_ , but not enough to let it interfere with the job at hand.) "Bonnie," he replies.

He lifts the suitcase out, and swings his own duffle bag up onto his shoulder. "But I was the one who grabbed this guy," he says, reaching into the depths of the trunk to pull out her stuffed teddy bear.

He holds the toy in front of her face, and there is a split second where she can't disguise that it pleases her. She looks at him, and even in the darkness, he can tell she's not as mad now. "Thank you," she says, taking the bear from his grasp.

Her fingers brush over his and Damon, who isn't into Harlequin romances, doesn't feel anything. Slight contact between fingertips is not enough to give him a hard-on.

(But the idea of being alone with Elena for an indefinite period of time totally is.)

 

 

They spend the first week watching television on DVD (who knew Ric was a fan of _The West Wing?_ ), and reading all the books in the house (there is no library like at the Boarding House, but there are a few shelves full of interesting reads, not all of them non-fiction historical crap).

The house isn't overly large, but it has two bedrooms and a living room that opens into the kitchen. A dining table separates the two areas into distinct sections, but it's small enough that if you're in the kitchen you can still hear and see the TV pretty easily. Elena cooks for herself, and Damon eats occasionally when the mood strikes, because he and Ric had stocked the cupboards and freezer when they’d come up to scout the location. He brought a cooler full of blood bags, which he stashes in one of the vegetable crispers, and he keeps himself down to a cup or so a day, since he's not sure how long this supply is going to have to last him.

They don't talk much, because despite the Olive Branch Teddy Bear offering, Elena has principles about her anger. But on the morning of the seventh day (which is a Wednesday anyway), they don't rest as prescribed in the Bible. Instead Elena comes to stand in front of him as he's reclining on one of the sofas. She kicks the bottom of his foot and says, "Play Monopoly with me."

This is neither a question nor a demand, so Damon is inclined. (Besides, if it means she's talking to him again, he's gotta go for it. He's sick of the silence and being alone with his thoughts.)

They agree on the outset not to play the way most people do (buying property as they land on it), but instead, Elena shuffles the properties like a deck of cards and then passes them out between the two of them. From there they barter and bicker, and three and half hours later, Damon wins most ungallantly. He stands up from the dining room table and sings _We Are the Champions_ while Elena pouts and puts the game away.

He punches her lightly in the arm and says, "Come _on!_ Don't be such a spoil sport. It was your idea to pass out the properties. Is it my fault I got Boardwalk _and_ Park Place?"

"You're an ass," she gripes, but he sees her lips quirking against her will, and he just wants her to smile, to be happy, if even for a split second. (Come to think of it, he should have let her win, but he's a little too competitive for that sort of bullshit.)

He punches her arm again and she spins in her seat towards him, retaliating faster than he gives her credit for, socking him in the stomach as she leaps to her feet. Of course it doesn't hurt him, but he grunts like any good Fake TV Wrestler, bending over in mock pain. She moves to the left and he grabs her around the waist without thinking. He tickles her like they're in the seventh grade, and when she screams and twists away from him, he follows her and they end up falling over the back of the couch.

The momentum carries Damon until he's on the floor between the sofa and the coffee table, while Elena laughs madly from the relative safety of the couch cushions. He reaches up, jerks her forward until she falls on top of him and her hair is in his mouth; she almost knees him in the groin accidentally.

Then he flips them both so that he's on top of her and when he pins her arms above her head, her laughter switches off like a light.

(He's sure Stefan didn't give him permission for this, but _whatever_.)

She's breathing heavily from the scuffle and the laughing, but as he stares down at her, he feels it change. She's not afraid of him, and she's not trying to get away, and that? That's why he gets off of her without doing anything.

"I'm gonna go for a walk," he says, and he opens the door and steps outside. (Practically runs.)

He hears her say his name, but he just trots down the steps without looking back. He's gone maybe ten steps before he remembers he can't really leave her alone. She could very easily steal his car and go back to Mystic Falls.

"Damon!" she shouts, and he turns to see her running down the steps towards him. She skids to a halt in front of him and he clenches his hands into fists to keep himself from grabbing at her.

This had been a terrible idea. He'd known it when Stefan first said it, but the masochist in him had agreed without any hesitation.

 _It's Elena_ , his brain had said. They needed to protect her no matter what, even if self-preservation became a casualty of war.

"You can't leave me here alone," she says, and he wonders if she knows she's got Stockholm Syndrome.

He wants to say, _I'm having a hard time_ not _leaving you alone, or haven't you noticed?_ but he doesn't, he just nods his head jerkily and turns away from her to look out over the farmland all around them.

She reaches for his hand and says, "Let's go down there and see if Ric's neighbors will let us ride their horses."

He's stupefied by both her suggestion and her fingers lacing through his, but he allows her to pull him down the lane. "Why would they let us ride their horses?" he asks.

She looks at him from the corner of her eye. "I don't know. Maybe you could...encourage them?"

He thinks the tide has changed suddenly, and he doesn't know why.

 

 

Their new hobby for the next week is to horseback ride every day. The neighbors are actually a really nice older couple who don't even have to be compelled once they know that Damon and Elena are friends of the Saltzman family. (Damon compels them not to ask why they're hiding out up there and to never tell anyone about them, but that's for safety reasons, not trickery.)

They race each other quite a bit, and depending on the day, and the horse, either one of them is declared the winner. This always ensues a chorus of _We are the Champions_ which Damon starts to fondly think of as their song (and Elena sings against her will) until he realizes he's thinking anything of the sort and then he wants to slap himself.

He's been tempted a hundred different times in a hundred different ways to just haul Elena into his arms and show her how she makes him feel. (There is something ridiculously arousing about her complaining about her thighs and ass being sore from the horseback riding.) By contrast, he almost calls Stefan about half as many times to tell him that they need to rethink this plan. Then he reminds himself it's been eight, nine, ten, then eleven days, and asks himself if he's really such a pussy that he can't handle one little girl for a couple weeks? Undoubtedly it won't take the Scooby-Doo gang any longer than that to either kill Klaus, or come to the conclusion that they need Damon and Elena back more than they need them gone.

"Damon!" she shouts, bringing his attention back to her. She's riding a beautiful black gelding today, and his coat shimmers in the sunlight just like her hair does. He wheels his horse around to get closer to her and the smile that spreads over her face convinces him that no, he cannot handle one little girl. Not when it's Elena. "There's a whole herd of sheep over here! How have we not seen them before?" She points, and as he comes past a small copse of trees, he sees what she sees.

There are a bunch of sheep, but what draws his eye most is all the lambs. There are at least ten of them and they're all running and jumping joyfully, bleating their little hearts out. He brings his horse to a halt next to Elena's and watches with her in silence for a few minutes.

"It's fun being in the country," she says and her leg hits his as her horse shifts restlessly.

"And to think, you didn't want to come," he says drolly.

She looks over at him, but her smile never wavers. "You didn't tell me the selling points."

"I guess I forgot the brochure, babe. Sorry." He holds a phantom paper in his hand and pretends to read, "Scenic landscapes, horseback riding, and shepherdless sheep, all at your disposal."

She laughs, and adds, "The perfect escape from real life!"

Their eyes catch and hold, and Damon wonders if that's what she thinks. That this isn't real, that what's been going on since the first moment he ever met her is somehow less than the reality of her life.

It stings more than he would ever admit because he feels like nothing was real at all, not until Elena. Life before her had that nightmarish quality that is so widely associated with vampires. Life since has been harder to bear, but sweeter too.

It's been real, every part of it, for Damon.

"I know I was a pain at first, Damon," she says softly. "But I'm actually having a great time."

Her eyes linger on his, like she's trying to convey something more than what's coming out of her mouth. He forces his lips to form a smile and then he turns away from the sheep. "We should probably get back," he calls over his shoulder.

He digs his heels in hard to his horse, and it takes off quickly across the field. Distance is only a metaphor at this point, but he needs some of it between him and her very badly.

 

 

"This season isn't as good as the other ones," she says. Picking up the DVD case, she looks at the back of it, as though _The West Wing, the Complete Fifth Season_ will explain to her why it sucks in comparison with the previous seasons.

"I think they got new writers," Damon says from his position to the right of her on the sofa. "That Sorkin guy's name isn't on the credits anymore."

She continues to scan the DVD holder and Damon says, “If you don't like it, we don't have to keep watching it."

"No!" Elena exclaims, feeling panicked suddenly. She lifts her head to look at him and Damon's eyes widen in surprise. "We have to find out what happens with Josh and Donna!"

He chuckles and then his eyes shift back to the TV. He's snacking on a bowl of popcorn that rests on his stomach. "Such a girl," he murmurs, his smile softer and sweeter than usual. Elena stares at him a little too long, her mind cataloguing a whole lot of details she didn't used to pay attention to. The crinkles around his eyes, the fact that he needs a haircut, the way the neck of his Henley gapes open just right and she can see a triangle of skin that makes her curious about the rest of his chest.

"So, you don't care to find out what happens? You could just turn it off, never see how it ends?" she asks, goading him intentionally. She doesn't like the feelings he evokes in her, especially now that she spends all of her time with him.

She really hates how at night, when she goes in to her room alone, how she sort of misses him, even though he's just on the other side of the wall. Her teddy bear stares at her, silently accusing her of cheating on Stefan in her heart.

Just because she's more furious than she can ever remember being at Stefan, it doesn't mean she wants Damon.

(Sometimes the errant thought that what she feels for Damon doesn't actually have anything at all to do with Stefan comes through her mind. She really doesn't like that, so she pushes it away, no matter how many times it pops up.)

"When you've lived as long as I have, you can figure out the ending way before you see it." He doesn't look at her as he makes this declaration, but there is something sad in his face, and she can see it even without eye contact.

"So, how does this end, then?" she asks, pressing her foot against his leg and jostling him until he finally looks at her.

"They end up together," he says with certainty. "Good people always do."

Elena feels a breath stick in her throat, and something like guilt assaults her. She wants to argue the point, because she's seen shows where that wasn't the case, but her tongue is suddenly thick, and she's not sure what her point would be anyway.

"Wanna bet on it?" he asks, and it seems he's taking her expression for a challenge, even though she hasn't uttered a word.

"No," she says emphatically, regaining her voice. "Because if I lose, you'll sing that stupid song, and I can't take it again."

"Queen is never stupid," he says darkly.

"No, _you_ singing Queen is what's stupid."

"Shut up."

"You shut up."

He flings a throw pillow at her head and dumps his bowl of popcorn. They end up missing the whole middle section of the episode they're watching when she gets off the couch to help him clean up and they start throwing dirty popcorn at each other.

It's only later, after a fit of hysterics, a round with the vacuum cleaner, and Damon restarting the DVD player, that Elena realizes she's perfectly content. They are in the middle of nowhere without anything but each other and small forms of entertainment, and she really is having the best time ever. Without Stefan. Because of Damon.

(Now is the time to panic.)

 

 

Stefan or Ric have sent weekly letters with relatively straightforward messages; the funny part is, of course, Elena's daily walk to the mailbox to see if anything new has arrived. (In the era of cell phones, texting, email and the like, her anxiousness to check the mailbox every day is ironic.) On the fourth Friday that they've been in New York, a thin letter addressed to Stacia Saltzman, which is Alaric's grandmother's name, sits in the mailbox.

She rips it open and reads:

 _D,_

 _Nothing's solved yet. Stay put for now._

 _~R_

This is much less information than they'd gotten the week before, and Elena's outraged that it's addressed solely to Damon, and that there's nothing from Stefan for her either.

She stomps back to the house, anger filling her up. She's been mad at Stefan all along, for his shameless shirking of his responsibility onto Damon—the fact that he hadn't even tried to talk to her about it, but just let Damon do all the dirty work—no, even worse he'd let Damon take the brunt of her disappointment, fear, and animosity.

She’s had nothing but time to think, even with all the mindless TV watching she and Damon have engaged in. Hours in the saddle across the Philipsens' property, and nights in her room unable to sleep have taken her through denial, anger, and sadness.

Things are (have been) changing for her for a while now. Her evaluations of her relationships with both Salvatore brothers have always been distinctly different. She's always felt the relationship with Stefan fell under favorable— _more favorable_ anyway. If she’s going to be in a relationship with a vampire, with someone whose natural instinct is to kill, she can only reasonably be in one with Stefan, since he chooses to live his life differently. So even in those moments when she felt attraction prickle between her and Damon, she would never have considered that it meant anything.

She loved Stefan, period. _It’s always gonna be Stefan._

Damon could be as infuriating, and flirty, and "ridiculously hot" (to quote Jenna) as he wanted to be, but it wouldn't change anything.

But some fundamental part of her _had_ changed, and that part is here, in the now, with Damon, and every day that they spend together makes that part keep shifting. Irrevocably closer to him, to the one she has not looked upon favorably. (To the one she hadn’t admitted that she looked upon favorably.)

Here, in this place, after the initial indignation passed, and she started letting herself have a good time, she began to realize that it's always been like this between her and Damon.

Easy. Comfortable. Fiery. Exciting.

She came to accept the truth, even if she has no idea what to do with it. (Doesn't think she wants to do anything with it, probably about 70% of the time.)

But when he looks at her with those eyes, she very nearly forgets everyone else in the world, including Stefan. Especially Stefan.

She thinks now, she _loved_ Stefan, comma, and she might be falling in love with Damon, semi-colon. She might be falling in love with him, but she knows he already loves her, and she doesn't want to do anything to hurt him, and he's so obviously holding back from her that she knows he isn't willing to risk it either.

Which might be what she finds most appealing about him anyway—the vulnerability. The fact that Damon—who is always so over-the-top confident, and annoyingly in-your-face about so many things—gets that deer-in-the-headlights expression makes her heart clench in her chest. It has for a long time, but here, she watches the war of emotions on his face on a daily basis, and she knows the right push from her could change everything.

She finds herself wanting to reach out to him, to pull him against her, to promise him that she won't ever do anything to make that fear justified.

She pushes open the door and finds him sitting at the table, reading. He's finally given in and picked up one of the historical non-fiction books he's been complaining about because they've been here more than three weeks, and he's read everything else in the place.

She knows, despite the fun they're having, boredom is creeping up on them. Boredom and tension that can only be satisfied one way. One can only read so much, watch so much TV, go outdoors, play board games, like they're on some summer camp retreat schedule before one snaps. (And when _one_ is Damon Salvatore, you really don't want that happening.)

The worst part is that he seems to be keeping it all together, and Elena is the one full of silent screams.

(Which is probably why she feels so much irrational anger from reading Alaric's cryptic note.)

She tosses the letter so that it lands on his book and captures Damon's attention.

He picks it up and looks at her briefly before pulling the paper out of the already-opened envelope. His mouth tightens as he reads it, and then he glances at her again, quipping, "You know opening other people's mail is a felony, right?"

And instantly, he's trying to make her laugh, because he knows she's upset. _God._ Sometimes, she just...feels so much--too much when he does stuff like that. There is no other word, no other concept to convey the emotion that wells up within her in moments like these, but to go there, with Damon? It's crazy.

She can't do it. She won't. Even if things are over with her and Stefan after this, nothing can ever happen between her and Damon.

She tries to quell her angst and return his level of levity by saying, "I didn't know you changed your name to _Stacia_." The smile that she can't quite force her lips into sags so she takes a deep breath instead.

He moves out of the chair, stands in front of her, and puts his hands on her shoulders. "It won't be like this forever."

"You don't know that," she says, and embarrassment overtakes her as tears come from nowhere. Suddenly, she's got her head against his chest, and it's not because he's moved any closer. She can tell he doesn't know what to do, because it takes him a long moment to finally wrap one arm around her.

"We'll get to go home soon. Or Stefan will come here to see you. You know he won't be able to hold out much longer."

That makes her madder for some absurd reason, and her tears dry in an instant. She pushes away from him and says, "We should just go home now! Nothing has happened. They haven't killed Klaus! We need to go home. Isn't it obvious? You're the only one who can do it."

"If that were true, Ric would have told us to come home," he says patiently and Elena spins away from him, scrubbing at her face in agitation.

"Since when do you do what they tell you?" she shouts.

"Since it became obvious that the only way to keep you alive was to listen to them!" he shouts back.

"This is a joke, Damon! A joke! What are we doing here? Playing house? Hoping that they're just going to solve it for us? Both of us—we're the ones who make things happen, haven't you ever noticed that?"

"You're just upset. That's not true." He smirks a little, and she can tell he wants to say something like, _well, it_ is _true of me..._ , but he doesn't go there. He visibly restrains himself and his lips flatten out and the light in his eyes fades slightly.

His bizarre calmness makes her crazy, and she does something that she hasn't done in anger since that night in Richmond. She strikes him, not in playfulness, but in a total loss of control.

Her life has somehow become a play dictated by mysterious figures and the whims of people who claim to love her, but never tell her the whole story.

And Damon's the one in front of her, so he’s the only one she can take it out on. When she starts punching him, she knows it doesn't physically hurt him, but at this point, she'll take whatever she can get. She knows it hurts him in other ways because he's Damon, and she's Elena.

It all happens in a blur—first her fists are landing wherever she can get them, but then her arms are twisted painfully behind her back and he moves both of them so that he's got her pinned between his body and the wall. His strength is far more than she can even dream of overcoming, but she never stops thrashing against him. He holds her until she grows tired, and then in a last ditch effort at what, she won't be able to explain even to herself later, she leans forward and bites him.

She gets him at the hard, solid part of his chest, just below his collar bone, and she sinks her teeth into him, through his thin t-shirt. He stiffens against her, a sudden stillness coming over him that has nothing to do with subduing her, and when she lifts her head from the infliction site, his face has transformed in a way she has never seen before, at least not close-up on him.

The blood around his eyes and his extended fangs scare her a little, but also excite her more than she knows is healthy, and she doesn't feel angry anymore at all; she just wants him, and her whole body quivers with it, with the idea, with the _need_.

So naturally, Damon pushes himself away from her so violently that he crashes into the kitchen table behind him, and when he gets himself upright again, he disappears through the front door she'd left hanging open minutes before.

She knows he'll be back, he would never abandon her, but she doesn't chase after him. Not this time. When he comes back, they'll both have to face things that they don't want to.

She sinks to the floor, her tears resuming their pace now that she doesn't have another outlet. She abuses Damon because he lets her; this realization is both disgusting to her, and totally rational.

She wipes her face, and says to the empty room, "No more."

 

 

At least an hour goes by before he returns, but she's waiting for him when he comes through the door. His eyes frantically scan the room until he finds her sitting on the floor, right on the spot where he'd left her.

"Damon, I'm so, so, so sorry," she says, scrambling to her feet, putting her hands out in supplication. "I'm not even mad at you but I took it out on you like always, and—"

"It doesn't matter," he interrupts, and she can tell something is different about him, but she can't let him dismiss her apology, or pretend that his feelings don't matter.

"It _does_ matter," she says, putting her hands on his chest, hoping that she can replace her previous behavior with something that's more pleasing.

His hands instantly capture hers, his grip firm and warm. "No, Elena, it doesn't, because—look. I called Ric, and—"

"You called Ric? I thought—"

"Yes, dammit, listen—"

"—we weren't supposed to let anyone be able to trace—"

"Elena!" he says, the sudden urgency finally breaking through her determination to set things right. "Bonnie's...dead. She's gone, Elena."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a little Damon/Katherine remembrance in this chapter.

Damon slams the front door behind him, not in anger, but because he needs a fucking metaphor of a brick wall to line up between him and his brother's girlfriend, or he's not just going to nail her against the wood paneling of Ric's family cabin, but he's going to bite her while he's coming, and they aren't ever going to come up for air again.

He's halfway down the road in the blink of an eye thanks to that vampire speed, and then he slaps his jeans pocket to make sure he's got his phone. He hid Elena's in the trunk of the car when they got there, but he's kept his on him, in case of an emergency.

This—Elena going ballistic, and him having to be the calm one—is an _emergency_.

Forget about Klaus, the danger, and every single one of them back in Mystic Falls trying to do whatever the hell they're trying to do.

Damon just wants it to be him and Elena all. _the. time._ Forever. Them, fighting, laughing, singing Queen, riding horses, watching stupid television shows that should have been canceled sooner than they actually were, and—really the capper on the whole thing—them fucking until they can’t move, and neither of them cares if Klaus has wiped all of Mystic Falls County off the map or not.

(It's like actually having a life. Like if he were human, the kind of life he might have had.)

See, all this selfishness? If Elena knew what he was thinking, she would hate him even more than she already does. He has lulled her into having a good time—even if it's been a totally PG-rated good time—but that's what Damon knows how to do, _have a good fucking time_. He never even broke out the Tequila shots, though God knows, they can only not do that for so many more days, because seriously?

They need to go the fuck home. _Yesterday._

He pulls his cell phone out of his pocket and dials the only person he can legitimately explain this to.

"Damon, why are you calling? What's wrong?"

Alaric's voice is demanding but hushed, because obviously, Jenna must be in the vicinity.

"I can't keep this up, man," he says with no preliminaries, and he hopes that his friend isn't going to make him explain it too much.

"Are you and Elena fighting a lot?"

Damon laughs, laughs until he bends over at the waist. He's halfway down the road between the cabin and the Philipsen's house. He can even hear some of the horses whinnying in the distance, a soft mocking sound considering his situation. (Animals have senses, maybe they know he’s about to lie.) When he regains control of himself, he says to Ric, "You could say that," and just leaves it at that.

Ric sighs, his breath heavy with something that prickles the hair on the back of Damon's neck. "I'd say come home, but after last night...shit," he mutters, and Damon wishes he wasn't standing out in the middle of the goddamn road, because he's pretty sure he's about to get really bad news. "We tried the channeling thing, at the Graveyard. It didn't work...and, Bonnie..."

Damon knows, without the words, like Emily Bennett is reaching through time to give him the brain aneurysm she should have given him in 1864 before he could ever become a vampire. She could have made sure this never happened; he guesses she would do it differently, given the chance. He swears, taking God's name into his mouth and spitting it back out in a way that conveys both his disbelief and his surprising grief at this turn of events.

If he thought Elena _biting_ him felt like an invitation to the one place he would never gain entrance to, he knows telling her that her best friend in the entire world died for her will go over like a deranged gunman on a college campus.

"No..." is all he can utter, other than swear words, for the next ninety seconds, and when he finally gets a grip on himself, all he can think to ask is, "Jeremy?"

"He's okay, he is. He said he and Bonnie talked about all the possible outcomes, and both of them knew the risks. To tell you the truth, he's taking it a lot better than Stefan and Caroline."

"How in the hell do you expect me to keep 'Lena up here with this information? Fuck, Ric, this is—"

"Don't tell her," Ric says, and his tone is all kinds of I-know-that's-the-dumbest-fucking-thing-I-can-say-but-I'm-saying-it-anyway.

"No way. I'm not going to be the one to hang for that. The only thing that's good about this is that the little witch died when I was hundreds of miles away. No chance for me to be responsible, and if you think I can look at her face every day and not—"

"I know, I know," Ric says tiredly, and Damon can see him in his mind's eye running his hand down his face in that world-weary way.

Damon looks back over his shoulder towards the cabin he just ran away from. "Why the hell couldn't Katherine have been the first casualty? _Why?_ "

"Because you aren't here to kill her. Believe me, by now, you'd have gone apeshit and staked her. She's driving me fucking nuts, and I don't know how Stefan tolerates her."

Damon smiles faintly, feeling that sense of agreement he and Ric have always shared, even through the phone. "I don't know if I can keep Elena here," he says, and that's the plain truth. He doesn't think he can be that cruel to her, even if it is for her own good.

"Have her call Jeremy. Talking to him will convince her."

Damon agrees, tells Ric to give him twenty minutes, and let Jeremy know the call's coming. Just before he hangs up, he says, "Don't get dead, Ric. I'm counting on you."

"I know. Stay safe. And keep that girl safe." He hesitates slightly. "I know it's hard for you, with her, Damon, for a lot of reasons, but she needs you. She needs all that love you've got in your heart for her to hold her up through this. Now is not the time to do your normal shithead stuff to protect yourself. Okay?"

It’s not like Damon’s not used to people saying things to him he doesn’t want to hear, much less deal with, but Ric’s fervent edict hits him broadside and knocks him speechless for a moment.

“Damon?” (He also hasn’t heard a fatherly tone in a long, long time, but there’s no mistaking it here.)

He mutters "Fine," and hangs up. He's not sure when Ric became the resident expert on Damon Salvatore, but he'd be lying if he said he didn't appreciate (but also resent) every word the guy just said.

He turns around and walks back to the house slowly, knowing that when he gets there, he just has to tell her as fast as he can, otherwise he’ll chicken out. Protecting her is one thing, but lying's another, and he just can't. Not this time, not about this.

 

 

"Okay, Jer," she says, and she chokes on a sob. "I lo-love you, too."

She squeaks out a goodbye and then tosses Damon's cell phone on the coffee table. He's standing at the end of the sofa she's sitting on, where she just had a very tense ten-minute long conversation with her brother.

Now that it's over she rests her elbows on her knees and presses her face into her palms. Her shoulders shake, and these little heartbreaking whimpers tremble out around her.

Damon would literally rather be bitten by a werewolf than stand here and watch this. It's the worst kind of torture, because there's no amount of fast healing. No ingesting of blood will ease this, erase this, or ever, ever bring Bonnie back.

He never particularly liked her, it's no secret, but he always admired what he recognized to be the Bennett DNA. The witch had been braver than all of them, willing in a way that came from generations of women who had endured unspeakable things.

"She's dead," Elena whispers. "She's really dead."

Damon stops thinking and just does what he wants; he stops dreading where it might lead, or what will happen when he gets to the place that he can't pull back from. Because this? This is as _in_ as he's ever going to be. She'll never need him more, even if someday, miraculously, she could ever want him.

So he scoops her up into his arms, and she gasps, but quickly buries her face in his throat, her arms clinging to his shoulders. He takes her to her bedroom, but doesn't wait for her to ask him to stay with her. He holds her against his chest while she cries, provides a never-ending supply of tissues, and rocks her gently. He listens to her different memories of Bonnie from kindergarten hijinks to the high school prom she'll never get to go to, and everything else in between.

He remembers waking up on the old dirt road where he and his brother had been murdered, and walking to the church. The flames had reached up into the sky, and everything he loved most had been with it, or so he believed at the time. He remembers this feeling, the one that Elena's in the middle of now, because it's what stayed with him all these years. The emptiness, the ache, the longing for what he could never get back.

So he murmurs worthless words against her cheek and holds her tighter, because he knows Bonnie means everything to her, just as all the people in her life do. For him it had only been Katherine and Stefan, and he'd essentially lost both of them that night. Elena had so many more people to love, and possibly lose, and it scares him to think of her feeling this way over and over again, forever.

Eventually, he kicks off his shoes, and helps her take hers off as well. Then he lies down on her bed, and tucks her beside him so that her head is on his shoulder. When she can't talk or cry anymore, she relaxes next to him, and still has the wherewithal to whisper, "Thank you," before she falls into an exhausted sleep.

Hours pass but he doesn’t join her; there's too much in his head for that. But as the night wears on, he eases his body out from under hers and she rolls away from him, curling into a little ball facing the opposite direction. He leans down to tug a blanket from the foot of the bed, and as his hand smoothes the afghan over her body her hand comes from nowhere, grabbing at his.

He could disengage, probably without waking her, but there is something about her unconscious need of him that's more powerful than anything else that's ever happened between them before. He can't walk away from her—he never has been able to figuratively, even if physically he’s achieved it a time or two. So when she pulls his arm over her, he fits his body into the space behind hers, curling protectively around her.

She settles completely when he presses his face into the hair covering her neck, a sigh of contentment breaking from her lips.

Damon's sure he's never going to escape this now; he'll die for her, or wish he was dead when they finally reunite with Stefan because there is no sort of barrier he can grasp at anymore.

His last thought before he too succumbs to sleep is that he loves Elena Gilbert, and just like with Katherine Pierce before her, it will destroy him.

 

 

Elena wakes suddenly, but gets to enjoy those few seconds of blissful forgetfulness only long enough to realize she's sleeping with a man who is not her boyfriend.

The reason for Damon pressed all along her back is what reminds her of the awful news from the day before. The storm of tears and heartache that followed had made her outburst and attack on him earlier seem insignificant.

 _It doesn't matter,_ he said, and he meant it.

 _Because Bonnie is dead._

Right now, their hands are entwined and resting just in front of her body on the bed, his arm draped over her hip. He's spooned behind her, his knees bent into hers, one of his legs between both of hers. His breath is on her neck, against her hair, and she's sure she's never felt quite this treasured.

She's been wrecked by her best friend's death, but once again, Damon has been there, has been exactly what she's needed.

It's so unfair, the way it's all played out. Unfair, and yet somehow wonderful at the same time.

She pulls her hand from his so she can lift her arm and put her fingers into the hair at the back of his neck. She presses his face tighter against her, sort of oddly hugging him, feeling the emotion well up even stronger as he reacts. His body seems to fold in more compactly to hers, and she knows it's instinctive, that even with his vampiric ability to control dreams, at this moment Damon is the most vulnerable that he can be.

His lips move over her throat, brushing at the hinge of her jaw, and then there's the moment when she can feel him having a totally male reaction to the way they're pressed against one another. One thing Elena knows about vampire boys? They are just like human boys in the sex department, only infinitely better at it. She remembers Bree ( _He is good in the sack, iddn't he?_ ), asking that question right after her first night with Stefan, which had been pretty wonderful. Knowing Stefan's intensity makes her certain that Damon's would be _more_ , just because Damon himself is more emotionally inclined, despite his protests to the contrary.

His hand flattens over her stomach, pulling her even more snugly into him and his hips make small rhythmic movements until he groans a little in his throat, a sound that quickly reminds Elena of the day before. She wanted him then, and she wants him now.

She’s mourning her best friend today, but that doesn't change biology, and in some ways, she thinks it even enhances it. She has no idea how much time she has with Damon, making every second more precious. It could all end before it even begins.

She knows the moment he awakens fully because his movements cease so abruptly, she's waiting for him fly off the bed as quickly as he’d gone out the door the day before, but he doesn't. He just rolls onto his back so that they aren't close together any more, and she hears him breathe deeply, in and out, like he's counting slowly, silently to himself.

So she rolls too, so that she's lying against him again, and murmurs croakily, "G'morning."

He gives a slightly embarrassed laugh, waits a beat, and then says, "Sorry."

"It's fine," she says. Really, it's more than fine, but she isn't willing to start something when she needs to brush her teeth. Besides, wouldn't Bonnie haunt her from the grave, if the day after Elena found out she's dead she has sex with Damon without even breaking up with Stefan first? Yeah, Bonnie would have an opinion about that for sure.

(She'd have an opinion about Elena even _wanting_ to do that, much less actually doing it. But that's a whole other issue; one she won't have to deal with.)

"Oh, God," she mutters, and then she starts laughing. She should feel guilty for it, but she can't, at least not right now.

"What?" he asks, and she feels his head turn towards her.

"Bonnie would shoot me for what I'm thinking right now."

"Huh," Damon grunts. "Yeah, me, too." Then his hand grabs at Elena's arm. "No, she would totally set me on fire."

They both dissolve into giggles, and Elena turns over so that she can press her face into his chest. Hugging him, she says, "We need to talk."

He hesitates, but replies softly, "Not here."

"No," she agrees. "Let's go for a ride."

 

 

Grief is a funny thing. Elena's something of an expert after her parents, and Vicki, and all the crazy things that have happened to her in the last year and a half. What's funny about it is one minute she'll be laughing, thinking of a fun time with Bonnie, and then she'll be crying by the end of the same memory.

She knows how this works; she's familiar with it. And it's not that she doesn't know it's real, it's just that it won't feel entirely real, not until she's at the Grill and Bonnie's not there, or until she sees Jer's face, and the pain he's being so brave about over the phone.

As she and Damon walk down the road to the Philipsens, holding hands, all of that, those things she's going to feel about Bonnie when they go home? All of that seems to bubble up and swamp her. It makes her not care at all that it's wrong for them to be the way they are. The simplicity of his palm in hers is ridiculous, but Elena loves it. She loves the way their steps synchronize as they crunch along in the gravel.

It's a long, quiet walk, but it's not an uncomfortable stretch of silence. Instead it feels like an agreement of sorts, something that words couldn't properly cover anyway. There's a confidence building there between them, and it's the one thing she can cling to in the chaos and strife.

Bonnie is gone, but Damon is not. He’s here, and she’s finally going to let it be.

When they get to the barn, Mr. Philipsen is there giving hay to the horses and he smiles at them and waves them inside to the stalls. "You kids can wait a bit, right? I'd like you to work the two at that end of the stable today," he says pointing vaguely. "But let them finish their breakfast first, okay?"

"Sure thing," Damon says and he walks over to Mr. Philipsen, chatting about stuff Elena doesn't care to join in over. She walks through the stable to the end stalls where Bunny and Ginger are waiting. They're both mares that she and Damon have ridden before. Ginger snuffles at Elena as she puts her hand over her muzzle.

She just stands there, petting the horse for several minutes, trying to imagine what life will be like when they go back to Mystic Falls. Without Bonnie, things will be so different, even if they figure out a way to kill Klaus. She looks back at Damon, who is standing with his arms crossed over his chest, intently listening to the benefits of home-grown grain, and she realizes he's actually interested in what Mr. Philipsen's saying.

They've been in New York for almost a month, and Damon has been as normal as a vampire can be expected to be. He's been content too, happy to be there with her. He hasn't left to go hunting, he hasn't even been restless, unless you counted the undercurrents going on between them, but that wasn't the same thing.

Damon Salvatore is completely capable of living a normal life—the very thing he's always mocked Stefan over—and Elena wonders if he knows that, or if he thinks he's just doing it for her.

He looks towards her, catching her staring at him so he smirks and waggles his fingers at her.

"You ready to go, babe?" he calls.

She looks back at the horses, both of which seem to have finished their meal. "I think they're good to go," she says.

Mr. Philipsen walks down with Damon and unlatches the stall doors so that the horses can be led out to the tack room to get saddles and bridles put on them. "I don't know what I'm going to do with these animals once your honeymoon is over. They don't get the exercise they need. Is there any chance you two will move up here permanently?"

Elena's gaze jerks to Damon's face, and the twinkling in his eyes tells her that he somehow led their benefactor to believe they’re newlyweds.

"Unfortunately, no," Damon says with a regretful sigh. "Eventually we'll have to return to real life."

He doesn't look at her as he says this, and something about it makes her heart twist in her chest. She leans over, wrapping her arms around his waist. "We'll definitely try to come back to visit, though," she says as she hugs him.

She feels the surprise in his slow reaction to her, but his arm goes around her and he echoes her with his own soft, "Definitely."

As they head out a few minutes later, the horses follow the natural path down to the meadow where the sheep graze. Elena looks over at Damon and asks, "Why did you tell him we're married?"

This is as good a question as any to start this conversation.

Damon smirks and shakes his head at her. "I never said that. He just assumed because—" he puts his fingers up in quote marks, "we look _so in love_. I just thought it was funny."

Elena watches the way his eyes skid away from hers, and she knows he's lying, but it's not worth pushing him over it. There's too much they need to talk about. Before she can say anything else, he continues with, "If you want to go back to Mystic Falls, I won't stop you, Elena."

"I know," she says, and he looks at her quizzically.

"How could you know that? I didn't even know for sure until a few minutes ago."

She yanks on Ginger's reins as the horse tries to go left sooner than Elena wants to. "I just know you wouldn't keep me here now, not when something so awful has happened. But Jeremy convinced me last night. They have a few more things they're going to try, and if those things fail—then we'll go home."

"Why are you being so agreeable _now_?" he questions. "Maybe we should have put Jeremy on Elena patrol all along."

She reaches out to him because they’re close enough to touch if he extends his arm too, which he does, placing his hand into hers. "Now, if this is it, if this is all the time I get with you, I'm going to take it."

He pulls away gently, slowing his horse to dismount, surprising her. She halts her horse as well and looks down at him. "Elena, you're all mixed up. This has all been weird, and with Bonnie dying—you're just—"

"Damon, stop," she says, and he actually does, though he looks like it's the hardest request she's ever made of him. She can read him so easily. This minor protest is just his last ditch effort—she recognizes it because she’s done it herself. She just wants to cut around all that, and get to the heart of it.

She knows that once she does, once she tells the truth, he will, too.

She climbs off her horse, and when they're both on the ground close to each other, she grasps his hand again. "Remember when you told me to stop lying?" His eyes flare wide, and she pulls him closer when she can feel him retreating. "There _is_ something between us, and I'm acknowledging that, Damon. I'm telling you I feel it, too. And I planned to tell you that _before_ you came to tell me about Bonnie."

He doesn't say anything, but his eyes cling to her face in a way that helps her to know he's not unaffected by the things she's saying. "What if this is the end? We're both willing to die, right? So this is our time. This is it. I can't see the sense in denying it anymore."

There's this really long moment where he pulls his hand from hers, and the way he looks at her makes her certain that whatever fear he has, he's going to let it go, right now. He steps closer to her, and takes her face in his hands. His thumbs rub over her cheeks, back and forth softly, grazing the corners of her mouth until she can't help but drop her eyes to his lips in the hopes that he'll eliminate the space between them. Talking’s overrated, and she’s suddenly so desperate to finally kiss him that she considers stopping him before he can start.

Before she can work up her nerve, he takes a deep breath, and says, "I...care about you, Elena." Her entire body flushes, from the point of contact of his fingers against her cheeks all down through her extremities until she feels like she must be rosy red from head to toe. It's not easy for him, but he's doing it, and her heart begins to pound in her chest. "And because I...care about you, I can't be selfish with you."

She frowns, because that isn't what she expects him to say, but also, it's vaguely familiar, like some kind of cop out that she's heard before. She wraps her hands around his wrists and says, "It's not selfish if I want it too."

"I don't deserve you, but Stefan does," he says, as though she hadn't spoken.

"Damon!" She jumps up and down a little, her hands squeezing his arms. She has the sensation of falling, as though Damon’s drifting away from her while they’re still actually touching.

He shakes his head then, and backs away from her slowly. She thinks he might have tears in his eyes, and she tries to follow him, but as his hands drop away from her face he jerks them hard enough to break her hold on him, and the feeling of loss is much more acute. He points a finger towards her, and it keeps her in place, as though he can control her with that one gesture. She freezes, knowing that something huge is happening, something she can’t control anymore than what happened back in Mystic Falls. She lost her best and oldest friend, and Damon’s killing her right now, with his words.

"I can't, Elena," he says, and he backs into Bunny, who snorts and shuffles sideways behind him.

It occurs to her suddenly that maybe this has more to do with Stefan than her, so she says, "We can wait until I talk to Stefan, if that's what you're worried about. That would make me feel better, too—“ Which isn’t entirely true, but she can deal with it. She can let Damon make good with Stefan, if that’s what he needs to do.

"Elena!” he interrupts. “This is bullshit! Oh, my god, how can you even—" He throws his arms up in the air and turns away from her, like he's just going to walk off across the pasture and disappear into the ether.

He's angry now, and she has no idea why, but it wounds her, that ache deep in her chest the same awful feeling she'd had the night Jeremy lay dead on her bedroom floor. "You can't tell me to stop lying, and then run away from me!" she shouts after him. "That's not fair!"

He spins back around to face her while yelling, "I told you to stop lying _six months_ ago, when I was drunk off my ass and you were the only touchstone I had in the world. Then, _then_ ," he emphasizes, pointing his finger at nothing in particular, just gesturing wildly, "I fucking killed your brother and you vowed to never forgive me, remember?"

"And then I forgave you anyway. Because I love you!"

She doesn't mean to say it; she didn't even know for sure that was what she felt—not until it falls out of her mouth and Damon looks like he's been sucker-punched, even with an ever-widening patch of grass between them.

Elena drops Ginger's reins, and though she wants to run to him, suddenly he's like a spooked horse to her. It's rather ironic that the expression on his face right now is so similar to the one he wore the night he killed Jeremy, because, if anything, this should make him happy.

 _It should make him happy._

But he's Damon, and maybe there is no sort of normal for him. Maybe he can't just be happy. Except that that's exactly what they've been these last few weeks together. Just happy.

She sees a collection of images in the blink of an eye, all the little things that have happened, all the moments that made her feelings for him swell to a proportion that she could no longer ignore. Maybe she’s been alone in it, maybe _she’s_ been happy, but it’s all been an illusion. Maybe all the reasons she should never have allowed herself to love him didn’t have anything to do with who Damon _is_. Maybe it's just what he can’t let himself _be_.

So she doesn’t run to him, she doesn’t try clinging to him. She does the only thing left to her: She puts it on him. "What do you want?" she asks. "You want to just pretend that the last month hasn't happened? That we haven't been here, and had this experience? You want us to go home and die for nothing? I guess it's the least I can do now—let you call the shots. You decide, Damon."

She turns and climbs back in the saddle. Guiding Ginger back towards the barn, she says, "I'm going home.”

The first time Katherine let Damon touch her inappropriately, he'd been home on furlough. She was the single most interesting woman he had ever met in his life, and he knew there was something different about her—but he was a product of his time. The only girls he'd ever been with, though he was twenty-four years old, had been prostitutes. He'd been away at war for three years and no reputable woman would have let his fingers skim her petticoats (though many would giggle and blush when he looked at them or kissed their hands), and reputable women were the only ones in his circle in Mystic Falls.

They went walking in the orchard. Stefan had gone to town for something, so they were alone, and they found a private spot, with trees sheltering them from prying eyes. Damon figured he could steal a few kisses, but Katherine grabbed his hand and dragged it under her skirts herself. There was so much material, both from her dress, the hoop skirt beneath it, and her petticoat, he really wouldn't have been able to find his target without her help had he been bold enough to try. She brought his fingers to her center, where the slit in her drawers, designed to make it easier for her relieve herself when the need arose, allowed his hand to go right to her most private body parts.

He'd been stunned, and then unbearably aroused, because she was already slick and inviting, and when he moved his fingers inside her, she moaned, her mouth falling open with a little half-smile on her lips. It had been the most beautiful sound he'd ever heard in his short earthly life, and with her instruction, he fingered her to orgasm. Her face had changed, the blood rushing in around her eyes, and her fangs appeared. She revealed herself to him then, and hoisting up her skirts again, knelt before him, unfastened his pants, and took his cock into her mouth.

For possibly half a second, he worried she might bite him in a place he really didn't want to be bitten, but she hadn't, she just worked him into a frenzy and when he came in her mouth, she spit it onto the ground at his feet.

It was the first time he'd ever received any sexual favors of that nature, and he was hooked from that moment on. Nothing could have made him betray her, not even the jealousy he felt as she flirted with his brother right in front of him. As long as he had her behind closed doors, it didn't matter.

He simply believed she would not behave that way with him, letting him touch her, and touching him in return, unless she loved him. And she told him that she loved him, as well, so he believed her.

Obviously, he got a clue later, but it was _much_ later.

So, it's not exactly that he doesn't believe Elena when she tells him that she loves him. She hasn't done anything to manipulate him; she hasn't even kissed him, for god's sake.

But the truth is, it's always played with his head. She looks just like Katherine, but at the same time, she doesn't, not at all. Her resemblance is only superficial; just as his initial curiosity about her had been. It hadn't taken long for him to realize that what drew him to Elena is that she is nothing like Katherine.

And isn't this what he wants, what made him call Ric the night before? (Isn't this the thing that scares the shit out of him?)

Elena, being Elena. Not being anything like Katherine at all, and him, not being what he's been all these years because of how she makes him feel?

It's everything he wants, and yet it's the hardest thing in the world to accept.

He understands now, it has been for Elena too, but of course, once she's embraced something, she's much more certain and entirely more brave than Damon could ever be.

He'll never be worthy of her, that much he knows. The real question is, of course, is he going to let that stop him?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Just FYI: my head canon for this story is that Stefan's been spending a lot of time with Caroline back in Mystic Falls, consoling her much the same way Damon consoles Elena here. Make what you will of that theory.]

Elena’s proud of herself for getting all the way back to the stable before she starts crying. Part of it is the relief of finding herself alone; Mr. Philipsen has already gone back to the house. She puts the horse's saddle and bridle away and brushes her for a bit, muttering her irritation and angst into the wind. Ginger nuzzles her when she stops grooming her and just stands there crying.

She’s not a weepy girl. She doesn’t cry for just anything. Her best friend dying, that’s a good reason to cry.

Damon, being Damon? Well, that’s probably not a good reason to cry. She tells herself that it’s more about Bonnie than it is putting herself out there and getting rejected. It’s stupid to be broken up over something not happening that she didn’t even know she wanted until the moment she said it aloud.

Right?

She puts Ginger in her stall and walks home. Damon hasn’t followed her, and she gave him plenty of time to come sweeping in behind her and tell her he wants her.

Or, you know, just grab her and kiss her. That would work too. And Damon seems more inclined to be a man of action than anything else.

Except, maybe not.

She gets all the way back to the Saltzman’s cabin before she gives up trying to figure out why he would act one way and then run, practically screaming, from her reaching out to him. She slams into the house and throws her sweater on the sofa with much more force than necessary, and that’s when her gaze falls on his phone. It’s still sitting on the coffee table, and she rounds the couch and picks it up before she’s even thought it all the way through. She checks the battery power (83%—so obviously he's been keeping his phone charged all along), and then she brings up his contacts list.

Her thumb hovers over the name on the touch screen, and then she just pushes it. If Damon catches her, maybe it will incite him to riot and he’ll finally act the way she thinks he should.

“Damon? What is it?”

Stefan’s voice is urgent, worried. “It’s not Damon,” she says, and she has to sit down on the couch behind her because her legs are suddenly shaking.

“Elena? Are you alright? Where’s Damon?”

“I’m just fine, thanks,” she snaps. “My best friend is dead. My boyfriend sent me off with his brother for god knows how long because _why_ exactly? I’m having a hard time remembering.”

There’s a long-suffering sigh unleashed on the other end of the phone and Elena has a split second where she wants to fling the offensive device across the room. She closes her eyes, gearing up to let Stefan have it; she has a rapidly forming list of things she wants to call him out on, from each piece of information she's ever had to pry out of him to the very moment when he decided with Damon and Alaric that she had to go away whether she liked it or not.

The worst part is that Elena knows that with all three of them looking at her with those concerned faces, she would have done what they wanted her to do. (She might have even willingly gone with Damon, alone.) So being angry about it solves nothing, because what’s done is done; that’s the one truth she excised from Jeremy’s not-death. There's an abrupt image in her mind: she sees Damon on the pasture next to his horse, tears in his eyes and extreme alarm across his face—something greater than fear, something she's never known and can't quite comprehend because she's never known betrayal like he has.

And just like that, it all clicks into place for her.

She opens her eyes. She knows for sure now: Of the two of them, the one she wants to fight for, by far, is Damon. Nothing Stefan says will repair what is broken between them. She doesn’t really _want_ him to fix it, so saying anything about it is pointless. She lifts a hand and waves it to the empty room, as though he’s there watching her. “It doesn’t matter,” she says when his continued silence is all that greets her. “Stefan, I think it’s fair to say that things between us are finished.”

The silence changes now, growing tenser, and then he says, “You’re breaking up with me.” It isn’t phrased as a question, almost as if he expected it.

So she tells him the truth. “I think I’m in love with Damon,” which is sugar-coating it, but she can only be so mean. She does care for Stefan; that’s the only reason he has the power to make her mad. He’s also the only one who might understand how she feels when it comes to his brother.

He says a word Elena's heard him utter a time or two—only when Damon's done something he finds inexplicable. She waits for some sort of argument or calm rationale as to why that's the craziest thing he's heard ever, he just says, “Well, I know he loves you, but good luck getting him to tell you that.”

She knows it too, deep inside herself, and even if he can never say it, or even show her how he feels, it doesn't change anything. The first time she considered it, the words had come out of Isobel’s mouth, but there have been a million tip-offs since then. Like a small seed planted inside her, it has grown into something that might be strong enough to battle his demons. “We’ll see,” she says.

“Elena…” his voice is soft, carrying that kindness that she was first attracted to. “Just…be careful…” he hesitates, and she wants to defend Damon, it’s on the tip of her tongue, but then Stefan finishes with, “...with him—with his heart. If you really feel it, then make sure he knows it. But if you don’t…”

“I would never hurt him,” she says, and the tears are back, but this time they aren’t for herself, and it’s actually empowering to realize that much of her angst is not self-directed.

“I don’t think he can go through it again,” Stefan says, and Elena knows what he means. Damon can love her, and she can die. That he could survive. What he can’t do is give himself over to the emotion and then have it not be returned.

“I know,” she says. The silence grows loud between them, and she has a moment of sadness for them, for their relationship. A feeling of finality assails her, and she's just grateful that he's not demanding anything more of her. She whispers, “I’m sorry.” Clenching her hand around the cell phone, she wishes she could hug him one last time.

“I am, too,” he replies, and his voice conveys it so much that Elena presses her hand to her chest to hold in the pain. “If there’s anyone in the world that can love my brother, and do it well, it’s you.” He pauses. “You’d be who I’d wish for him.”

Elena's tears rush down her cheeks and she says goodbye to him. She sets the cell phone back on the table and then paces in the living room for a while. Soon, she drifts into Damon's bedroom, trying to feel close to him even though he's miles away and who knows what he'll be like when he comes home.

She lies down on his bed, pulls his pillow to her face. It smells like him, and she finds comfort in that. She knows she has to give him more—she has to be bolder than she's ever been. She has to have confidence in the knowledge that he loves her, even if he's too afraid to admit it or embrace it.

She has to show him that even if he does nothing, the way she feels isn't changing.

* * *

Because he's a giant pussy, he spends a great deal of the day away from the house. (Mr. Philipsen willingly gives him a rake and lets him muck out some of the horses' stalls. So not only is he reminiscing about the 1860s today, he’s actually doing stuff he would never have done back then, being a gentleman and all. How the hell has this become his life?) He has no idea what he hopes that will accomplish; maybe when he gets back, she'll really have stolen his car and left him there alone, or she'll just have come to her senses, and she'll tell him she takes it all back.

(She said she was going home. He’s almost positive she didn't mean it literally.)

He tries to argue himself out of it for a while. She doesn't love him; she can't possibly. Just because he can't bring himself to say it to her when he can't erase her memory doesn't mean she can't take it back. Sure, he won't be able to forget that she said it, but what does that matter? It's not like he'll hold it against her. He can just pretend the whole stupid thing never happened.

He can pretend that he never met her. Or, at least, he never got to know her well enough to comprehend that she's the only person in the history of time, who could, you know, get through to him. Or, that the last month of his life hasn't accidentally been the happiest time he’s ever known—not special because of any particular events, but almost more so because of the banality of it all. Anything— _everything_ —is better because of Elena, even utter boredom.

Yeah, he can totally pretend all of that. Why not? He's spent the last 150 years pretending that Katherine loved him (even though she also fed Stefan her blood), and killing people while maintaining that it doesn't bother him, and being a monster not just because he is one, but because he _wants_ to be.

He's an old pro at that pretending stuff.

Too bad Elena seems to see through that like he's made of plexi-glass.

By the time he walks back to the cabin, it's late afternoon. The Camaro is still parked alongside the east wall of the structure, and he faces the fact that he knows Elena wouldn't run. That's not her way.

(She’s not like him.)

He walks in the house, but she's not in the living room or kitchen. He calls her name, and when there is no response, he gets a little panicked. She wouldn't set out on foot, would she? He looks around for his cell phone, but it's still on the coffee table, where she'd thrown it down the night before.

He goes towards her bedroom, but the door’s open and he can see before he gets all the way there that she's not inside. He says her name again, and then sticks his head past the slightly ajar bathroom door to the same results.

When he finally notices that the door to his room is only open a crack, he all but zips in there in his speedy vampire way. He doesn't shove open the door too quickly because he's still trying to act like it's no big deal.

It doesn't matter, because she's not even looking at him as he enters the room. She's got her arms curled around one of his pillows, and she’s sound asleep. He hates to look too closely to see the tear tracks on her cheeks, but he knows they're there.

Suddenly he can hear Alaric in his head, _Now is not the time to do your normal shithead stuff to protect yourself._

God _damn_ him. He's such an ass. For all the moments of his life where he could have really and truly hated himself, this one has got to be the worst.

He just stands there, watching her, for who knows how long. Eventually her eyes blink open. She jumps as though he scared her. "Damon," she whispers, sitting up hastily. She rubs at her eyes and her cheeks flush, and what he should do is just admit the truth, and beg her for forgiveness, but his throat is thick with all the words that fail him on a regular basis.

She's on his bed. What the hell is she doing in here? It assaults him in a new and different way, that sudden breathlessness that sometimes afflicts him when he looks at her. He’s wanted her for so long, the need just sort of became a part of him, but in this moment, it’s deeper and— _raw_. As though to not have her would mortally wound him, like a real stake through the heart.

He accepts the idea that it really would be _making love_ with Elena.

She looks around like she’s trying to identify where she is, and her embarrassment grows; it's like he can see it flowering out of her. She scoots to the side of the bed, and is about to stand up when he finally says, "No, stay, it's okay. I like you there."

Her eyes find his, and while she looks uncertain, she remains on the bed.

He’s a natural born flirt, but he’s obviously losing his touch, because she has no idea that he’s teasing her.

"You want to go back to Mystic Falls, don't you?" she asks, hugging his pillow to her chest.

"No," he answers truthfully. "We should stay here. I just didn't want to keep you against your will anymore."

She glares at him. "I haven't been here against my will since the beginning of season two of _The West Wing_."

He laughs, smirking at her as he leans on the doorjamb. "We are having a good time. But we always have. Remember Atlanta? You didn't think you'd like that either, but you did."

Her nose wrinkles and she nods in response to his words, but then she says, "You stink. What have you been doing?"

He sniffs at his shirt. He does have a lingering odor of horse shit on his clothes, which goes perfectly with the fact that he's shoveling it out to her right now. "I helped Mr. Philipsen clean up some of the horse stalls."

She tilts her head, looking at him with an odd expression, but she says nothing. He quirks his brow at her. "What?"

“Nothing, just…” she shrugs. “Have you noticed how completely normal you are here? I mean, would Damon Salvatore of the Salvatore Boarding House clean out someone’s horse stalls? It’s like, here, the real you has emerged.”

Damon drops her gaze, guilt flooding through him. "Look, Elena—"

"No," she says, tossing his pillow down on the bed as she stands up. "You look."

(He’s already a little turned on, but for some reason her bossing him like that makes his jeans a whole lot tighter.)

She removes the vervain necklace from around her throat and drops it gently on the table beside his bed. "I trust you, Damon. I'm here, in this place with you, now, because I choose it. I'm not running, or hiding, or pretending anything. And...I don't want to hear your excuses. Either you want to be with me or you don't. So just tell me."

The metaphorical fist around Damon's heart squeezes until he feels short of breath. It takes all of his physical strength, which is quite a lot, to keep himself from launching his body across the bed to get to her. She has no idea how that piece of furniture is virtually all she has left to protect her. "It's not that simple, Elena," he chokes out, which will, of course, make her believe that it has something to do with his brother.

The reality is, Damon really does not care how it will make Stefan feel. Back when he decided not to steal Elena away, it was because he never anticipated her straight forward offering. Turnabout's fair play, right? In the beginning he might have wanted to steal Elena from Stefan to prove he could do it, but now, he just wants her, and it has nothing to do with his brother.

(Besides, what kind of man says no to Elena Gilbert twice in one day? He's not a fucking idiot.)

"It is that simple, actually," she says and she comes around the bed. He tries not to flinch, but the possibility of her touching him makes him feel like every nerve ending in his body has been exposed to the most potent vervain around. She stops just in front of him, but makes no effort at physical contact. It’s like a cavern of epic proportions at the same moment she's still impossibly close. “You want me, or you don’t.” She says it again, and if he couldn’t hear her slightly accelerated heartbeat and see the color in her cheeks, he might think she knew the answer.

But she honestly doesn’t, because he’s played his hand a little too well.

He can take her in his arms, and say everything he wants to say. He can strip her naked and kiss her between her thighs and then confess his love as he buries himself inside her. And then he can make her forget it. Take her home to Stefan completely untouched—well, unchanged, anyway.

His hands tremble at the thought of any of it—of all of it.

It doesn’t quite sound like his voice when he all but whispers, “I want you.”

Her heart pounds, or maybe it’s his, and she leans in just a little. Damon's whole body tenses, and he thinks he might shatter into a million pieces. She smiles ever so slightly as she tips her head back. He's sure she's going to say something that will make his head explode, but instead one soft hand lifts to touch his face. She gently guides his mouth to hers, pressing her lips over his in such a simple, not-quite-platonic way that he almost feels guilty for the raging hard-on in his pants. _Almost._

But not really. All the same, he keeps his hands at his sides because he's not sure what will happen if he touches her.

She doesn't use her tongue, and it doesn't even last very long, but as far as Damon's concerned, the whole world is lit up brighter than the Fourth of July. She pulls back and breathes, "Go take a shower." He clenches his jaw as she slides past him to go into the living room. "I'm serious," she calls. "You smell horrible!"

"Elena," he says, turning so he can watch her as she walks towards the kitchen. "I..." Words fail him, yet again. If he does this, if _they_ do this, he'll never be able to make her forget, because he'll never be able to stop.

She looks back at him, and her face is absolutely the most gorgeous thing he's ever seen. "You can't change your mind now," she says and her smile wavers just a little.

"No," he says, because he hasn't been able to change his mind for months, not when it comes to her. "I won't."

* * *

Elena waits until she hears the shower come on in the bathroom, but then she literally jumps around in the kitchen silently pumping both arms up and down and mentally screaming, _YES!!!_

It's not until she knocks herself sideways into the counter and hurts her hip just a little that she stops reacting like a crazy person. She figures she's got him now, because even if he tries to renege when he gets out of the shower, she's going to take a page from the Damon Salvatore Handbook, and not take no for an answer.

She's smiling so hard her cheeks hurt, so when she opens the fridge to get something to eat, it takes a few moments for the realization to break through her haze of happiness.

She opens the crisper, just to make sure, to be positive that she’s seeing what she thinks she's seeing.

She doesn’t know exactly what it is about Damon that makes him the most impossible person she’s ever met in her life, but at that moment she wants to smack him more than at any other time thus far. (And that's saying something.)

She storms into the misty bathroom a minute later, says his name loudly, and waits as he slides the cloudy glass door open just a bit. “Can I help you?” he asks, and though she can see his face, and the smirk on it, the fact that she can hear it in his voice is what pisses her off.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she demands.

He’s got shampoo in his hair and she’s trying very hard to not let the beads of water skimming down his torso draw her eyes with them. “Could you be more specific?” he asks, ducking his head under the shower head to rinse away the soap bubbles.

His eyes close as he sweeps his hand through his hair, letting the water slick it down over his scalp. It’s only for a split second that they lose eye contact, but Elena can't help the downward sweep of her gaze. He hasn't pulled the door open far enough for her to get a total eyeful, but it's enough to make her have to really focus to remember what brought her into the bathroom in the first place.

“I just looked in the fridge,” she says, pointing towards the kitchen unnecessarily.

“And?” he asks.

“You’re out of blood.”

He shrugs. “So?”

“So? Where have you been getting it? What did you _really_ do all day today?” She gives him a pointed look.

His eyes narrow and he grimaces slightly. "What the hell, Elena? I wasn't draining the horses, if that’s what you’re thinking! I had my last of it this morning, before we went for a ride. I’ll be okay for a couple days. It’s one of those things we needed to talk about, but we’ve been hashing out a few other major things, so I forgot about it.” He looks annoyed with her, but hurt at the same time. “Can this wait, until I’m not, you know, naked?”

"You _forgot_ about it? Seriously? Your means of survival, and you just _forgot_ about it?" She can't help the thick sarcasm lacing each question.

"I don't do animals, as you may or may not recall!" he yells. "And I wouldn't hurt the Philipsens! See, I knew this was a bad idea—you don't really trust me, Miss Here's-My-Big-Gesture!" He moves a hand around his throat to indicate her necklace.

"This isn't about me not trusting you!" Elena shouts. "It's about _you_ not trusting _me!_ That's a really important thing—you needing blood, and you didn't tell me! We have to be honest—"

"Elena! Fuck me, alright? I _forgot!_ I swear to God, I just forgot!" He shoves the shower door further open and grabs at her wrist, jerking her closer. "You need to get out of here, right now, you hear me?" He gives her a hard shove, enough to propel her back towards the open door way.

It's like that moment when she bit him the night before—something inside her just comes unhinged and she finds herself charging back until she can feel the spray of the shower against her face and throat. It's a completely illogical move considering the violence broiling between them, but she just can't let it go. She reaches up and wraps her hands around his neck, but she doesn't have to pull his head to hers, he's already doing that himself, his lips capturing hers as he spins her around and presses her up against the shower wall.

She's instantly soaked, where the shower itself doesn't get her t-shirt, jeans and socks, Damon's naked body does the job because he's pressed against her from shoulder to knee. He wedges a leg between hers and his mouth covers hers so completely, he takes everything from her in one sucking breath. His tongue and teeth dominate and Elena's hands grip his wet hair, holding him as tightly as possible.

When he pulls back, gasping for air, she cries, "You can't keep secrets from me, you can't!" His hands find their way under her ass, yanking her up so that their lower halves slide together. He's so hard against her belly, Elena feels like she's about to spontaneously combust.

He pauses, his eyes meeting hers fiercely. "I couldn't, even if I tried," he breathes. Then his mouth finds hers again, and Elena gives up the wonderment that maybe she just picked a fight so she could finally have this.

Whether it was a subconscious wish, or just the way things had to go because of who they are doesn't matter anymore. All that matters is Damon's tongue in her mouth and his hands gripping her bottom so hard that she's sure she'll have bruises in a matter of hours.

He kisses her like she's never been kissed before, like she's air, and food, and water, the basic necessity for his very existence. She has a vision of his mouth at her neck, of his teeth sinking into her skin, and her thighs nearly go up in flames at the thought.

He grinds against her in a way that she knows they are barely going to get out of the shower stall, much less make it to one of their rooms and a bed. She pushes him back so that she can pull her shirt over her head, and he helps, because it's not easy with the extra burden of water. It plops onto the floor of the shower; then he eases her down so her feet are on solid ground and reaches to turn the water off.

Their lips meet again, softer this time and his hands cup her breasts, pulling her bra away. "Those jeans are gonna be a bitch to get off," he mutters against her collarbone, and Elena can't help but laugh. She moves forward so that he'll back up and let her out on to the bath mat. Their eyes catch and hold and she undoes the top button and then the zipper, and then his hands are there, sliding inside, his fingers rushing over the curves of her hips and roundness of her buttocks, helping her shove down the sopping wet material. Once they're near her knees, his foot comes up and he slides his leg between hers, causing them both to shudder slightly, as well as taking her pants the rest of the way off so she can step out of them. Her socks go with them, and then she's just as naked as he is.

Something sweet happens then, almost as if they've suddenly switched to slow motion. Damon presses his open mouth to her cheek, and the corner of her lips and Elena lets her hands skim down his sides, over his ass, and then because she can't stop herself, one finds its way between them and wraps around his cock. He's hard, and hot, the smooth softness of his skin rivaling the finest velvet she's ever touched. Feeling him, knowing what it means, is so intoxicating, she can't help shivering with delight.

He swears, something offensively beautiful, but it's the expression of all that—all that she makes him feel. It brings the urgency back as quickly as it had seemed to diffuse. "Damon," she whimpers, and he scoops her up, plants her on the sink counter and hooks both his elbows under her knees. They both cry out as he slides himself inside her, and Elena clings to him, her arms tight around his neck. The sensation is incredible, and the way he holds her legs open allows both deep penetration and the right amount of pressure at the top of her sex. Couple that with a month's worth of foreplay, and Elena bursts into orgasm after almost minimal effort on his part.

The only thing that keeps her from complete embarrassment is the way Damon says her name as he loses control. It's dazzling to watch, and even with her eyes half-closed in her own bliss, watching him come completely undone might be the greatest moment of her life.

She loves him so much; the words teeter on the edge of her tongue. Saying it again when he's still so new to the whole thing seems unfair, so she just keeps it to herself, treasuring the feeling and the certainty.

Like survivors of a storm-tossed sea, they just hang there together, in the quiet aftermath. It all happened so fast, Elena's mind still reverberates with the knowledge that Damon Salvatore is inside her, his hands warm and cradling against her back now.

"Well, that didn't go exactly like I planned," he says hoarsely in her ear as he takes a deep breath and steps back from her.

Elena grabs his face and brings his mouth back to hers. She puts all the emotion she's feeling into the kiss, and she knows it works because Damon's hand surrounds the back of her head, holding her to him. The passion in that gesture is enough for her to know that they are on the same page, even if they have a hard time getting it right when they're talking.

When the kiss ends, Damon presses his forehead to hers, panting softly against her skin. "Say you believe me," he whispers, and Elena tightens her grip on his face.

"I believe you, I do," she says. "It's just...Stefan didn't tell me everything. There was always something else, that he'd tell me when he was forced to, but..." She pulls back so she can look into his eyes. "I'm not trying to compare you to him, I promise, it's just that I've always felt like you told me the truth, and when I saw that empty drawer in the fridge...my heart almost stopped. It's not just because you didn't tell me, it's because you need it, and I know you need it."

She runs her fingers along the line of his jaw and finishes with, "You need it to be strong, and I don't want you to ever, ever be hurt."

She thinks maybe he could forgive her for anything just from the expression that comes over his face at those words, but it's the beautiful smile that follows that makes her chest hurt exquisitely.

He picks her up off the counter, kicks the wet clothes in his path aside, and takes her to his bedroom.

* * *

Damon loves girls; he always has. He loved them before he knew the mysteries of their bodies, before he knew they could make his brain stop functioning almost entirely just by pressing a finger against that spot on the underside of the head of his penis; before he knew that when you please them, they make the most delicious sounds ever known to mankind.

But, as any afterschool special might teach you, making love with someone that you love is by far the best way to do it. He doesn't mean to become a cliché in the very moment that he allows himself to go completely over into the realm of loving and being loved by Elena Gilbert, but at the same time, he's powerless to stop it.

Love can destroy you—he knows, it destroyed him once upon a time. But it can also awaken a sense of benevolence, bring to your consciousness the truth that there are things worth fighting for, and most of all, it can make you so happy you want to weep because of it.

(Just for the record, he doesn't weep. But he comes awfully fucking close.)

He spreads Elena out on his bed and gently canvases her body from top to bottom, from left to right, from front to back. He finds all the places he cruised by in the bathroom earlier when he was in the _just get inside her before you go completely nuts_ mode, and she returns every caress, and kiss, and smile of wonder with one of her own.

By the time he's running his tongue over the soft quivering skin of her inner thighs, he's so hot for her he's afraid he's going to come again right on the quilt without her even touching him. Somehow he pulls his mental faculties back and gives her the most thorough head he can manage. He knows it's better than good because _she's_ weeping by the time she orgasms, and then she's as limp and lifeless as only a girl who is totally satisfied can be; he not only has total control back, but he feels more powerful than perhaps at any other time in his life.

(It's funny how surrendering can make you king of the world.)

Who needs to kill Originals and break Sun and Moon Curses when you can make Elena Gilbert scream your name and praise God all in the same gasping breath?

He's got a pretty smug expression on his face by the time she's able to open her eyes and focus on him again, so she sets out to make him putty in her hands, and that? That's almost as good. (Okay, it's better, especially the moment right before he blows his load when she nips at him at just the right second. He's pretty sure he screams her name, too, and he can hear her laughing, so he figures he embarrassed himself fairly well, too.

It's just that he can't find any energy to care, especially when she throws her leg over his body and straddles him, her moist and creamy center rubbing against his lower belly enticingly.)

"God," he mutters, one hand reaching up to brush her hair away from her face as his other palms a pert, berry red nipple in its center. "I am so in love with you, it's not even funny."

At that, Elena's expression grows incredibly serious and her fingers stroke tantalizingly over his chest. "No, it's not funny," she says softly.

She stares down at him for a long, quiet moment. His fingers glide over her cheek and then he slides his thumb up the curve of her chin to tug on her bottom lip a little. "This is forever, Elena. You know that, right?"

She nods, and tears appear in her eyes, making the brown crystalize into diamonds that own his heart. "I know," she whispers.

He falls asleep a while later with her still on top of him, and perhaps for the first time in 168 years, Damon Salvatore is at peace.

* * *

Elena finds out that one can have sex for any reason in the world. There's the moment when they're eating a very late dinner that she licks her lips because she can feel spaghetti sauce lingering there. Damon is around the table and on her faster than is imaginable, and she's used to how quickly vampires move.

Then there's the moment a hour later when she's rinsing the dishes that he's washing, and he gives her a sideways grin, so she just reaches over and unzips his jeans.

Over the next twenty four hours, they finish watching the final season of _The West Wing_ , because they still had half a season to go. They make love on the sofa after Josh and Donna kiss for the first time, and then again after Leo dies, because Elena starts crying thinking of Bonnie, and Damon's remedy for her tears is his tongue strumming her clitoris.

He muses as they're lying in bed that he wished Ric's family cabin had a bathtub like the one in his bathroom at the Boarding House, and when she asks him why, his description of what they would do in a bathtub makes her unable to resist the erection that starts poking her in the side the longer he talks. She slides her fist up and down on him, and he hisses her name, so she takes him in her mouth. He feels really good against her tongue, and then she hums around him for good measure and he actually whimpers.

She tells him that she loves him as he's slowly moving in and out of her as he's got her braced on the edge of the kitchen table when their effort at breakfast dissolves into more of the same. His brow is creased in concentration, but he opens his eyes and sips at her lips gently with his own. "I love you," he breathes back, and they come at the same moment, and Elena wonders if one can die of ecstasy.

(If so, she's going to go any minute now.)

They've finally gotten dressed again with the intention of going outside for a walk and some fresh air when Damon's phone rings.

Elena's head moves toward the sound because she hadn't realized it was still on, and she thinks she should tell him about her talk with Stefan.

He doesn't appear overly concerned as he picks it up. "It's Ric," he says, looking at her as he answers it.

"What's up?" he asks.

Elena listens, gathers enough to know Ric is finally summoning them home. Damon gets directions to a place just outside Mystic Falls where they're going to meet for the final showdown. He tells Ric, "We'll leave within the hour."

 _And just like that, everything changes,_ Elena thinks. Damon slides the phone into his jacket pocket and says, "It's time to go home."

"You need blood," she says.

He nods curtly. "So do you."

Elena reaches up and pulls her hair away from her throat, throwing it back over her shoulder. He moves across the room in that blindingly fast way, so that as she blinks, he's standing before her. He kisses her mouth softly, just rubbing his lips over hers tenderly. Then his fingers brush at her pulse point, as if readying the spot. She closes her eyes a moment later as his teeth pierce her skin, and the pleasure that blooms through her as he takes what he needs feels so akin to sexual gratification, she wishes she'd insisted yesterday that he do it.

They are close enough together that she can feel his erection pressed between them. He lifts his head from her neck and the blood recedes from around his eyes. "You taste even better than I dreamed," he mutters, his voice tight.

He drags his teeth over his wrist and offers it to her so she can be prepared for whatever they're about to face. She keeps her eyes open and on his as she drinks. The instant headache assaults her, but so does a thrilling feeling of invincibility.

Whatever happens, she and Damon are more powerful now than they've ever been before, and it has little to do with the blood exchange.

She believes that they'll survive because nothing else is fathomable.

She pulls her lips from his wrist and cups him through his jeans. "One more for the road?" she asks.

He smirks. "I love you," he says, the laughter infused in the words full of joy and promise.

"I know," she replies.

An hour later, they speed down the highway, the Camaro humming around them. Their joined hands rest against Damon's thigh. Perhaps death awaits them, but fear has no place with either of them anymore.

It's possible the elements have finally aligned, Bonnie has sacrificed her life, and now the doppelganger and the man she loves stand united.

Damon once called himself a fatalist, but Elena knows now what a lie that was. They both hope, because love without faith isn't love at all.

Timing, on the other hand, is everything.


End file.
